"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Friday, January 29, 2010

The Absolutely Amazingly Dumb Arne Duncan

When NOLA school board chair, Phyllis Landrieu, gave thanks to a Category 5 hurricane that killed over a thousand people and led to the greatest Aftrican-American diaspora of the 20th Century with her "I say, 'Thank you, Katrina' all the time" in 2006, everyone surely knew that the corporate charter school ideology had become fixed in the area of Landrieu's head where a brain was supposed to be.

Three and half years later, we have a Secretary of Education uttering the same callous blessing in praise of Katrina's devastation. From Nick Anderson at WaPo:

Duncan was quoted as replying: "It's a fascinating one. I spent a lot of time in New Orleans, and this is a tough thing to say, but let me be really honest. I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster, and it took Hurricane Katrina to wake up the community to say that 'We have to do better.' And the progress that they've made in four years since the hurricane is unbelievable. They have a chance to create a phenomenal school district. Long way to go, but that -- that city was not serious about its education. Those children were being desperately underserved prior, and the amount of progress and the amount of reform we've seen in a short amount of time has been absolutely amazing."